The
Republican Party is one of the
two major contemporary
political parties in the United States, along with the
Democratic Party. Founded by anti-slavery expansion activists in 1854, it is often called the
Grand Old Party or the
GOP, despite being the younger of the two major parties. In the political spectrum, the
party's platform is considered
center-right.
The Republican Party has the second most registered voters as of 2004 with 55 million, encompassing roughly one-third of the electorate.[2] Polls over the last year have found that twenty-one to twenty-six percent of Americans self-identify as Republicans.[3][4][5]
There have been nineteen Republican Presidents. Republicans currently fill a minority of seats in both the United States Senate and the House of Representatives, hold a minority of state governorships, and control a minority of state legislatures.
Founded in Ripon, Wisconsin, in 1854 by anti-slavery expansion activists and modernizers,[6] the Republican Party quickly surpassed the Whig Party as the principal opposition to the Democratic Party.[7] It first came to power in 1860 with the election of Abraham Lincoln, a former Whig, to the presidency and presided over the American Civil War and Reconstruction.[8][9]
